


Tastes of Ice

by Stariceling



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Community: rotg_kink, Gen, Senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack thinks he's the only one missing something, until the other Guardians tell him what they've given up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tastes of Ice

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this was that each of the Guardians had to give up one of their senses to gain what is basically immortality. Although it occurred to me later it would have made more sense to have Pitch lose his sight. He'd be at an advantage in the dark!

Everything tastes like ice.

Well, unless ice actually does have a flavor. Jack eavesdrops on children when they break off icicles and crunch on them, and he’s pretty sure it doesn’t. Ever since he can remember eating has been a chore he only bothers with to stop the pains in his stomach and his tongue’s only purpose is occasionally getting burned. It just doesn’t feel so much like something is missing if Jack decides everything tastes like ice, instead of admitting he can’t taste.

That was how he thought a year ago, when he had nothing. He had already been invisible, alone, and unloved. To be missing a sense on top of it scared him. For the first few decades he even worried that the rest of his senses would disappear one by one until he lost all ability to interpret the world around him.

Now Jack has a reason to trust that he won’t just fade away. He has a place in the world and people who care about him. He even gets dragged to parties hosted by each of the other Guardians each solstice and equinox.

He still isn’t sure what to do when they serve him food, however. Every dish looks and smells so nice it seems a waste to put it in his mouth. Maybe, eventually, he’ll mention this last of taste. He isn’t sure the others will understand.

That was how he thought five minutes ago, before he noticed the smell.

Everyone is chipping in to help make up for last year’s Easter. Jack has been set to hand painting special eggs with Sandy and Tooth while North and Bunny argue over candy recipes. (Jack can hear bits of the argument from where he sits due to North’s volume.) The smell of rotten egg is not one that belongs in the warren two weeks before Easter.

Jack lifts his head, sniffing for the sulfurous source, and finds that it seems to be coming from Tooth’s direction. More accurately, it’s coming from the little clutch of eggs patiently waiting to be painted by her.

“Hey Tooth.” Jack wrinkles his nose, not sure how she hasn’t reacted to the smell yet. Maybe she thinks it’s one of his instead and is trying to be nice. “I think there’s something wrong with one of your eggs.”

Sandy nods and forms a picture of a cracked egg with stink lines coming off of it. Jack finally notices that Sandy is covered with eggs in varying stages of being painted, some of them leaving colorful tracks in his sand. He doesn’t seem to care at all, lying on his stomach in the grass and focusing on painting golden horses trotting around the middle of his egg.

“I think this pattern is just fine,” Tooth argues.

“Not the pattern. It smells like there’s a rotten egg.”

“Really? Oh dear. Which one?” Instead of smelling the eggs right in front of her, Tooth scoops up several between her hands and holds them out towards Jack.

Before he can ask what she’s doing, Bunny has apparently smelled trouble and appears to check up on them. He stoops over the waiting eggs, nose twitching, and deftly picks out several to drop in the box at his side. The one Tooth was halfway through painting is one of the rejects, much to her dismay.

“I don’t understand why they always hide in my pile!” Tooth wails.

“They’re not very well hidden if we can smell them out,” Jack points out. The smell is already dissipating now that Bunny has sealed away the source.

“I can’t smell them.” Tooth shrugs as if this is the most obvious thing in the world and picks a fresh egg to paint.

“Oh.” 

“That’s why the rotten blighters always try to get her to paint them.” After a moment of twitching his nose in the air, smelling for any more bad eggs, he turns to Sandy and comments, “They’re all over you again, mate.”

Sandy sits up suddenly, shaking off at least a dozen little eggs. Tooth sets aside her brush for a moment to help pick stragglers off of his shoulders.

Tooth is so matter-of-fact about it, but Jack still feels bad that he just assumed without paying attention. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize-”

“Sorry for what?” Tooth laughs. “It’s been so long I barely notice anymore. We all gave up something when we were chosen.”

“We did?” Jack blinks in confusion.

“Keep forgetting to tell you about the facts of immortality, don’t we?” Bunny settles at Jack’s side, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “We all traded one of our senses for this life. You must have too. Or did you think it was just you?”

“For instance: I gave up my sense of smell, and Sandy gave up his sense of touch,” Tooth adds. Sandy nods in confirmation. Pictures of an eye, an ear, a nose, and a hand flash above his head, with the hand lingering after the others.

“You too?” Jack asks as he turns to Bunny.

“Me too. But you’ve never even noticed what it is, have you?” Bunny’s paw moves down Jack’s side, poking at his ribs and stomach. It tickles, and Jack tries to squirm away from the unexpected examination. “I never realized you were such a shrimpy little thing! I always thought your footfalls were so light because you fly.”

“Stop that!”

Bunny chuckles but lets him go. 

Jack tries to think what sense Bunny could have given up, going through Sandy’s pictures in his head. Obviously it isn’t smell, and the fact that Bunny has just been poking him to feel how skinny he is under his hoodie rules out touch. His ears visibly move to hone in on sounds, so he can definitely hear.

“Can you see me?” Jack finally asks, though he’s sure he must be wrong.

“Can’t see you, or anything else for that matter.”

“But you never miss with those boomerangs!”

Bunny grins and points to his ears. “These aren’t just for looks.”

“And you paint all these eggs! How do you-”

“Each dye smells a little different, and I know every one of them”

Bunny is smirking as if he is aware of the look of astonishment Jack is giving him, and maybe he is. For the moment the most important thing in Jack’s mind is the realization that Bunny never making eye contact _isn’t_ a sign that his fellow Guardian still refuses to accept him. He’s been worrying about that for months.

“Here we are! Who wants to try new Easter candy?” North’s strident voice interrupts the moment.

“That means North is deaf?” Jack guesses. That’s if each of Sandy’s pictures was for a different Guardian.

“Right in one.” Bunny cups a paw around his mouth so North can’t read his lips. “You ever catch him telling the yetis to knock or stay out of his workshop? They all know to ‘forget’ about that.”

“I know you are whispering about me!”

Bunny snickers, shaking his head, then puts his paw down and turns to address North. “Those had better not be candy canes.”

“Is fine. They are all in flowery spring colors. Try one.”

“How is that fine? The mint is overpowering from here. North!” Bunny protests.

Tooth makes a disapproving noise over the candy and Sandy happily accepts a pink and yellow striped candy cane before North offers one to Jack.

“I’ll pass. I have no sense of taste.” It’s a relief to know for sure that this is just how he is, that it’s not a sign of any deeper problem, and that he’s not alone. It’s even more of a relief to just say it so that they are all on the same page.

“Oh, you poor little nipper.” Bunny snatches Jack up in a fierce hug, nearly squeezing the breath out of him.

North’s booming laugh overrides Jack’s attempts to ask if Bunny is joking. “I will tell yetis: This is why you never praise their fruitcake! They will understand.”

Sandy flashes the same series of pictures, this time with a mouth added for Jack. He seems pleased that they’ve covered the whole spectrum between them.

“And you won’t be tempted to eat anything that could rot your teeth!” Tooth exclaims, clasping her hands together happily.

“How can you pretend this is a good thing? He’ll never be able to enjoy _chocolate_!” Bunny moans. “Manny, that’s just too cruel.”

Jack doesn’t mind. He has four other senses that still work fine. More importantly, he has four precious friends on his side. He is no longer invisible, alone, or unloved. He is no longer afraid.

Maybe when Bunny calms down, Jack will ask him if ice has a flavor.


End file.
